Warning - If you haven’t seen episode 6 of this season of
The Walking Dead, then do not continue.
SPOILERS ahead.
If you're still here, then you know a few episodes back, Jesus (Tom Payne), put Maggie (Lauren Cohen) in a very dangerous position by deciding to bring the Saviors that were taken prisoner back to the Hilltop camp.
When the group of Saviors were captured by Jesus and company in episode 2, the general consensus was that they should be put down permanently. After all, the Saviors are a treacherous lot, and if the shoe were on the other foot, then they all know how that would most likely turn out. Despite that reasoning, and after having argued at length with both Tara and Morgan over it, Jesus insisted that they needed to be better than the Saviors and give the prisoners a chance to redeem themselves. Jesus definitely has good intentions, but in the world of
The Walking Dead, we all know how far good intentions get you.
Fast forward a bit to "The King, The Widow, and Rick", and Maggie begrudgingly agrees to allow those captured Saviors to remain breathing – outside the gates of course. She decides to build a prison to hold them, and just when we thought Jesus has shown her the light (couldn’t help it!), Maggie drops a bombshell on us. She is only keeping them alive in case they can be used as a bargaining chip with Negan and the rest of the Saviors at the end of the war. In the event that is not the case, she will kill them all. As a bonus, she threw the weasel Gregory in the prison as well. It was a big moment for Maggie, as we see her find the middle ground between vengeance (I mean this is the group whose leader turned her husband’s head into sauce) and thinking tactically in the long term.
Entertainment weekly sat down with Lauren Cohen to discuss the events of tonight’s episode.
On her state of mind with the decision she made and her ability to find a tactical advantage:
With as much as is going on, she still is very singularly focused on this one ultimate goal. And in that conversation that Aaron and I have at the end — the grief and the pain of not having these people — the only thing she can really do is stay focused. I think that the action Maggie really needs to take doesn’t necessarily need to be this, but happens to be this.
On her decision to throw Gregory in the prison and what she has in store for him:
I just love the stuff with [actor Xander Berkeley]. It’s so fun. It’s so interesting. We’ve got Gregory using his usual tactics to try to manipulate, and not only is Maggie now at his desk while he’s on the other side of it, but she ends up using his own tactics against him at the end of the episode. There’s a reason to not make too impulsive a decision, but what Maggie needs to do is put Gregory in his place and get him out of her head.
This is the great consideration of progressing to the place that she’s in. Whose advice do you take, and who is your trusted advisor? Who do you listen to? And at the end of the day, you still have to make the decision on your own. Gregory’s ideas do permeate as much as Jesus’ do, but she needs to get some space.
And on what’s next for Maggie:
It gets really dark. I really go into previously unknown territory with her this year. It’s been freakin’ wild.
You can read the rest of the interview
here.
If you ask me, some of the best moments of
The Walking Dead are when one of our favorite rag-tag group of survivors gets pushed too far and it gets dark and ugly when they push back. I think it will be doubly interesting to see Maggie be that one. What do you think, are you excited to see how far Maggie goes? Let us know in the usual place!